You had been practicing in secret.

It started as a curiosity—a few bookmarked articles, a couple YouTube videos, the slow realization that maybe it wasn’t as impossible as it sounded. The language felt heavy on your tongue at first, all unfamiliar sounds and strange sentence structures, but slowly, word by word, you started to make sense of it. You repeated phrases under your breath while washing dishes, scribbled vocabulary on post-its, and listened to slow, deliberate recordings in bed at night when you were sure Damian was out on patrol.

Because really, it was supposed to be a surprise. A quiet thing. Something just for you. He already spoke so many languages—fluent, effortless, unreadable—but you had been sure this was one he hadn’t touched. Niche enough, rare enough. Surely beneath his notice. So when he came home early, the kitchen still warm from tea and your mouth still echoing with hesitant syllables, you didn’t hear him at first.

You were reading aloud—muttering through a paragraph with care, your accent thick but improving—when the silence behind you shifted.

He was already leaning against the doorway, arms crossed, something unreadable curling at the edge of his mouth.

“That word,” he said flatly, voice like smooth stone over still water, “does not mean what you think it does.”

You froze.

Your spine straightened. The book lowered. You turned slowly, dread already forming like a pit in your stomach.

He hadn’t even moved. Just stood there in his dark, tailored clothes like some academic specter, eyes sharp, face infuriatingly calm. His next words came in that same language—fluent, perfectly intoned, precise like a scalpel—and they slid into the air with the ease of someone who had been speaking it since childhood.

You stared at him.

He blinked. “Your pronunciation,” he added, in your language now, “sounds like you’re trying to insult someone’s grandmother.”

You felt your face heat, mouth parting in a mix of indignation and wounded pride. You’d been so certain he wouldn’t know. So certain you’d have the upper hand for once. But of course—of course—Damian Wayne knew the language. Probably studied it by candlelight at age eight just to discredit an assassin monk in a monastery somewhere. Of course he’d speak it perfectly.